Almost everything about the Summer Solstice!

It is a paradox. If Solstice comes from the Latin "immobile sun" (our star reaches its highest point at noon and seems immobile), it is for humans, and since the dawn of time, the rendez-vous of movement. A pagan celebration at Stonehenge, the endless Midsummer festival in the northern hemisphere, a musical spurt in France... On 21 June, we dance, we sing, we move.

The same day as the "Fête de la Musique"?

In 1982, Jack Lang, French Minister of culture, did not choose 21 June by chance: practically speaking, it is the shortest night and the beginning of summer; but from a symbolic point of view, it is above all the evening that has seen the most festivities and celebrations since the dawn of humanity. This 21 June is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, the longest day in this part of the world, with 24 hours of uninterrupted sunshine north of the Arctic Circle.

Light is not heat

On the summer solstice, the period of sunshine in the northern hemisphere is longer than on any other day of the year. But this does not mean that the first day of summer is the hottest. The planet absorbs more heat on that day, but it takes several weeks to release it.

The Sun King rules the world

In northern Europe, the summer solstice is called midsummer. The followers of Wicannism in New Orleans call it Litha. In Christianity, it is called St. John's Day, celebrating the birth of John the Baptist on June 24, with great bonfires, in keeping with what has been done for thousands of years. Long before that, the ancient Egyptians started the year on this day and the ancient Greeks celebrated the solstice in honour of Demeter and Athena.

All because our planet is tilted...

The tilt of the Earth has more influence on the seasons and the amount of sunlight received than the distance between it and the sun. At the summer solstice, the North Pole is at its closest inclination to the sun. In the southern hemisphere, the opposite is true: the South Pole is furthest away. This is why the summer solstice is in Paris and the winter solstice is in Auckland. However, the Earth does not approach the Sun at the summer solstice. This happens two weeks after the winter solstice, a time called perihelion. At the summer solstice, the northern hemisphere is at one of its furthest points from the sun, the aphelion.

But why does our Earth tilt?

When an object the size of Mars (called Theia by the scientific community) crashed into the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, the debris from the impact went into space and would have formed the Moon. As a result of the impact, our planet would have been tilted at an angle of 60 to 80 degrees and its rotational speed would have been increased tenfold, as it is today. The whole thing has stabilised since this event, and our degree of inclination is now 23.5 degrees, which explains our seasonal changes.

The solstice, a globalized beatnik delusion?

According to pagan folklore, evil spirits would appear at the solstice. To ward them off, people wore garlands of flowers and herbs around their necks. One of the most effective of these plants, the "demon-hunter", is known today as Midsummer's Day grass. Supporters of the Seattle Solstice Parade, an annual event in the Fremont Arts District, proclaim that it "casts a spell of joy, hope and rebirth that spreads from Fremont to the entire universe. The Painted Cyclists, a group of clothingless cyclists who wear intense body makeup, help cast this spell.

Back in our old Europe: party people watch the sun rise over the menhirs of the prehistoric monument Stonehenge, near Amesbury in southern England. Tourists and druids for a day gather there in a modern prayer to nature. Many still wear Celtic clothing, even though a civilisation known as the Beaker People completed Stonehenge a millennium before the Celts arrived. The stones that make up this megalithic structure would have been placed to celebrate the summer solstice, with the sunrise perfectly aligned with the central stone on that day.

All brothers and sisters around the world?

From Greece to Russia to Mexico, slaves and rich owners would have celebrated together.

From ancient Greece...

According to some calendars, the Greeks welcomed the arrival of the New Year on the solstice. The celebrations, a festival called Kronia in honour of Cronus, god of agriculture, lasted all day. Slaves were invited to join in the festivities, eat and play games alongside the free people. The Olympics of the time began a month later.

...to the Mayan city of Chichen Itza...

El Caracol is said to have been the observatory of the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán jungle in Mexico. The front steps of the building face the northernmost position of Venus, and the points of the structure point to the sunrise at the summer solstice and its sunset at the winter solstice.

From Alaska...

In Alaska, the summer solstice is celebrated with a night baseball game. The game starts at 10:30 pm and ends in the early morning. The tradition began in 1906, and the 113th game was played in 2018. And in Iceland... Midnight golf is played!

...to St Petersburg

The St. Petersburg White Nights Festival lasts one month. On the summer solstice, the Russian city has almost 19 hours of sunshine and the inhabitants make the most of it. During the White Nights Festival, ballet and opera performances can be enjoyed, sometimes starting at midnight. Many of the activities take place outside, as there is almost no darkness.

Even the fairies are out

According to European legends, fairies and other mythical creatures do not hesitate to make their presence felt on the evening of the winter solstice. This was the inspiration for the English bard's A Midsummer Night's Dream (Midsummer, another name for the solstice). Shakespeare tells the story of Oberon, king of the fairies, his mischievous servant Puck and the fairy queen Tatiana.

Allow me a little seriousness about the solstice

What do our friends in science have to say about it?

You may never have thought about it, but the summer solstice is not just an event for our planet. Every planet in our solar system has one. Mars, for example, has one a few days after ours, in June. On Uranus, the summer solstice occurs... once every 84 years! There, a season lasts 21 years. That makes for very long winters...

And the sun continues to shine. Models of stellar evolution estimate that the sun is about 40% brighter today than it was when the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago.

The Greeks used the summer solstice to calculate the size of the Earth

In the third century BC, the Greek astronomer and mathematician Eratosthenes (276 BC to 194 BC), who was also the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria, knew that the sun on the summer solstice would be directly over the city of Syene (today's Aswan), as Egypt lies almost directly on the Tropic of Cancer. In Alexandria, located north of Syene, the sun always casts a shadow, even on the solstice.

Eratosthenes therefore realised that he could use the angle of the sun of Alexandria and the known distance between the two cities to obtain the earth's circumference. He arrived at a figure very close to the true answer (40,075 kilometres). In addition, he was also able to calculate the inclination of the planet.

The Egyptians would have taken the solstice into consideration when building the pyramids

Mark Lehner, an Egyptologist and expert on the Sphinx, has observed that when a person stands near the famous Sphinx on the summer solstice, the sun appears to set exactly between the pyramids of Chephren and Kehops. This is remarkably similar to a hieroglyph, Akhet, which roughly means "horizon". "It is impossible to know whether this similarity is a mere coincidence. If it is somehow intentional, it would be a great, huge example of illusionary architecture," Mark writes in Archive of Oriental Research.

Rats and bats do not like it...

In humans, it is not uncommon to feel sad or anxious in winter, when the sunlight is at its lowest. In nocturnal rats, the opposite is true.

"For rats, long days cause stress, whereas long nights do the same for us," says Nicholas Spitzer, professor of biology at the University of San Diego. Rats exposed to 19 hours of sunlight and five hours of darkness were less likely to venture into a maze and less willing to swim, according to his study. The same applies to bats, which have very little time to hunt: less than two hours during the summer solstice.

But the summer solstice would make humans happy

A study by Cornell University looked at the Twitter tweets of about 2 million users around the world: the longer the days, the more positive the messages.

Meanwhile, at the SOLTICE Editorial Agency...

The pen on the paper glides along, sowing clues to reach the box office without any evil, hardly any malice.